Pomegranate Molasses

You may remember that a few weeks ago I crossed off a bunch of resolutions and discovered that I had 25 jars of pomegranate juice in the abyss of my freezer. While we don’t have our own (producing) pomegranate trees, they are one of those produce items I can always seem to round up if I need them. They are like the lemons, albeit harder to come by and much more expensive if you have to buy, but if you put it out there, they will come. Some get eaten fresh, but most get juiced. Check out this post from 2012 on my juicing process. 

2015 was the first year in many that I did not concoct up pomegranate source, but I didn’t need one, since I had some much juice frozen from the past 2 years. The reason I had so much juice, in addition to all these artisan cocktails I think I’m going to but never make, was to make pomegranate molasses.

Like the preserved lemons I make, pomegranate molasses is staple condiment in my kitchen. I make a batch once a year or so, then I use it to add all kinds of deliciousness to my meals. The taste of pomegranate molasses is a bit hard to explain: basically, its reduced pomegranate juice, so its the same flavor but more concentrated. It is tangy and sweet and you have to taste its amazingness to really understand.

And its super easy to make.

In a heavy pot, combine 6 cups pomegranate juice with 3/4 cup sugar and 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice. Cook at a low simmer, stirring regularly, until thickened to a consistency of syrup. This took around an hour for me. I know its ready when my spoon can leave a slight trace when I pull it though the pot. You can also check by pouring the contents into a measuring cup. You want to reduce it to about 2 cups. Pour into a clean glass jar, let cool, and store in the fridge.

juice, sugar, lemon

gently simmer

stir regularlly

when you can see a line left from you spoon in the bubbles, its probably ready.

Its easy to scale up or down the recipe, but I use between 1- 2 cups of it a year. According to the interwebs, its good for 6 months, but I’ve used mine that was over a year old and it was perfectly fine. As it gets older, the sugars crystalize a bit and thicken, but that is easily remedied by heating the jar in a pan of warm water and stirring (like how you would warm honey).

olive oil, lemon, pomegranate molasses salad dressing

I use pomegranate molasses in many ways, and it naturally pairs well with Middle Eastern cuisine. Here are some ideas was that I use it in my kitchen:

• Toss or drizzle over roasted veggies, with or without browned butter. I like it with carrots or winter squash.
• Add to vinaigrette. It’s great with olive oil and lemon. A favorite to use it on is this Arugula and Halloumi Salad.
• Brush on meat as a glaze. It works with beef, chicken, duck, and particularly lamb.
• Add to sauces or relishes for meat or veggies.
• Drizzle over grains and greens. Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem has a great Wheat Berry & Swiss Chard with Pomegranate Molasses recipe.

like any jar of sticky stuff, if it gets on the jar threads its quite likely your jar will be a pain in the ass to unscrew. I keep a square of parchment over the lid but under the ring to make it easy to open

How do you use pomegranate molasses?

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When Life Gives You Lemons…

It’s Meyer lemon season here in Northern California!

Meyer lemons are a cross between a lemon and a mandarin, which is why the Meyer has great flavor with less sourness than traditional lemons. They arrived to the US in 1908, when USDA “plant explorer” Frank Meyer encountered a dwarf lemon tree near Beijing, and returned home with it. Mr. Meyer mysteriously drowned during another expedition, but his namesake tree became a California favorite. Commercial growers deemed the lemons to soft for shipping, but they won the hearts of home gardeners. Now no longer a California secret, you can find them used in menus all over the country or have them shipped to you, like from the Lemon Ladies. 

While I don’t have my own tree (we lost ours in those few weeks of hard core frosts a few years back), I always manage to find a supply of them each winter. In my part of the world, people are happy to share their bounty. If you put it out to the Fates at be that you’re looking for lemons, you’ll come home to bags on your porch from neighbors and Facebook messages offering trees that can be harvested. While Meyers are technically available from November though April, they are their best right now. I love taking advantage of local fruit, that I no aren’t sprayed or waxed. But despite their long season, they don’t last forever off the tree. I use as many as I can fresh within a week or so of harvest, and then I try to get the most out of them as I’m able; preserving them in various ways to use throughout the year.

How I Take Advantage of Meyer Lemon Season:

Make Preserved Lemons. I did a post on this last year, you can read it here. Preserved lemons are packed with salt and cured, and are a staple in my kitchen. 

Make Limoncello. This is actually my first year making this, but pretty sure you can’t go wrong with lemon, vodka and sugar. My research yielded a wide range of ratios and techniques, but I settled on 2 cups of vodka (I went with 80 proof, I can’t stand the “traditional” 100 proof Everclear) and 5 lemons. I took the zest of 2, peels of 3, added the vodka, and stuck in the back corner of the pantry. I’ll let you know how it turned out in 3 months once I add the sugar! 

Dry the peel. Using a vegetable peeler, I strip off the peel, and lay on cookie racks and sheets to air dry for a week or so. I’ll store in a glass jar and will add to my loose leaf herbal teas. I’ve also thinly sliced whole lemons and dehydrated, also to use in tea or in glasses of water.

Freeze the zest. I regularly use zest while cooking, so I spend the time now to use my microplane zester to grate off the peel and freeze in glass jars. When I need to use some, I simply scrape some out with a fork and add to my dish. Based on my freezer inventory, I had a lot left from last year, so I didn’t freeze anymore from this batch.

Freeze the juice. Once the peel is removed, don’t forget about the juice! Using a wooden hand juicer, I juice all the fruit. Other than a jar for the fridge to use immediately, all juice gets frozen. I’ll do some in ice cube trays for single use portions, and some in various sizes of jars. Make cleaning products. Those juiced and zested lemons might not look like their good for much, but they still have a use! While most end up in the compost, a few get put in a jar and covered with vinegar. This will sit on a windowsill until needed, then strained, and then used in my homemade cleaning solutions that use vinegar as their base. I also take a whole lemon, cut in half, and rub over my cutting boards to clean and disinfect. 

Of course, there are lots of more traditional ways of preserving, like lemon curd or marmalade. I usually make a small batch of curd and eat it fresh with scones, but I’m still well stocked with jams to bother with the pain of marmalade.

I’d love to know, how do you extend the lemon season for year round?

Killing 4 Resolutions with One Stone, aka- how everything is solved with meal planning

January is always about resolutions, new goals, and fresh beginnings. Although I’m actually a big fan of resolutions, I did not make a formal list this year. Yet regardless of resolutions of not, in January, I find myself succumbing to an invisible pull, creating the need to purge, clean, organize, plan.

Maybe because the cold and wet of outdoors forces me inside and the normal levels of clutter make me claustrophobic. Maybe my mind is tired and does not want to be burdened down by the pages and pages of recipes I saved and piled “to make one day”. Maybe the blank slate of the coming year is overwhelming, and I need to create order by coming up with plans and lists.

So yesterday I killed 4 typical New Years Resolutions with one stone: organized, purged, planned, and saved money. Chances are, your list of resolutions includes the exact same things. Here’s how I did it, at least in one aspect of the homestead: food.

My family isn’t a big spender on “stuff”, so when we need to save money, the first thing we cut back on is our food shopping. Cooking what’s on hand is not a hardship for us, certainly not for most of the month. I keep a well stocked pantry, plus I have my garden. My mom keeps me supplied with random cuts of beef, lamb and pork depending on who got butchered at their rural hobby farm. There are almost always a stewing hen or two from my birds. At any given time, I have enough ingredients to feed a neighborhood. Yet with no plan, I often resulted to “easy”, which means buying new ingredients.

GOAL: Save money by cooking what I currently have in the house, organize the freezers, purge and organize the piles of recipe cutouts I’ve saved, and create a meal plan.

First order: organizing and inventorying the freezers. In the garage, we have 2 chest freezers. In the kitchen, we have a small bottom freezer on the fridge. I’m pretty great at not forgetting about what’s in the fridge, and some frozen things, like chicken stock and beans, make quick rotation. But otherwise, the freezers may as well be a black hole. Things go in, they rarely come out.

The first step to figuring out exactly what I had, and make a list of what the discoveries were. If you’re bad at labeling, this also becomes a game of “what is this???” I’m pretty lax about the “use by” guidelines, so other than a bag of berries that spilt everywhere, I kept it all. But that’s just me, make your own call. There are lots of resources available if you are concerned about food safety.

Some of the fun things I found were: 2 partially full jars of peas (which got consolidated into one damn jar); 16 half pints of pomegranate juice, labeled from 2014 and 9 jars without labels that I can only assume were from 2013; 4 cups of pitted plums; a gallon sized bag of cherry tomatoes, and a jar of something green that I’m 90% sure is tomatillos.

I didn’t bother to inventory my pantry, because I’m pretty well versed in what’s in there, but now would be a great time to check yours or your cabinets if you tend to forget about things also have black holes in your kitchen. I typed up my inventory list, and intend on crossing off items as I use them.

Second Order: organize, purge and plan. Now, armed with my inventory list, I sat down in front of my stack of recipes. I’ve written about this before: I have serious hoarding problems when it comes to recipe cutouts and printouts. Not as bad as I’ve been in the past, but I still have a lot. I went though both the stack of “recent” pages and my binder, and pulled out anything that didn’t sounds good anymore or I know I won’t ever make. I also pulled out anything that used one of the ingredients that was on my freezer inventory list. The goal was to plan for as many meals that I had stuff for, and try out as many new recipes from my stack as possible. 

Now this is impossible for me to do during summer, because what the garden provides is different each day, but in winter its totally feasible. I have limited options: kale, chard, spinach, arugula, lettuce, bok choy, carrots, beets, last remainder of fall broccoli. From the pantry: winter squash, onions, garlic.  I also don’t have any of the urgency that summer produce causes: as in, OMG I HAVE 25 POUNDS OF HEIRLOOM TOMATOES THAT WILL GO BAD IN 5 MINUTES. Winter basically suspends everything in slow motion, so it won’t really matter if I pick beets tomorrow or next week.If you are new to meal planning and trying to prevent food waste, the key is to think about how much of an ingredient a meal uses. If you know you won’t finish something up, use it in another meal within a few days. For me, feta, milk, and (if I didn’t have it growing) cilantro are my downfall. By the time I thought of another meal, they usually had spoiled.  To prevent this waste, I make sure I have at least two dishes that use up a highly perishable ingredients.

Third Order: save money. Now that I had a meal plan together, I made a grocery list for any fresh or new ingredients needed. For my 14 nights of dinner, which will inevitably stretch for longer because of leftovers, I only needed to buy 7 new items. If I don’t have a giant shopping list, particularly without expensive cheese, I will guaranteed save money.

Mission complete! 

In case you’re wondering what my dinner meal plan looks like for the next two weeks? Here it is, and what I need to purchase:

• broccoli-quinoa salad with buttermilk dressing (buy buttermilk, use extra for blackberry and peach scones)
• tandoori-spiced leg of lamb, with chard and naan (buy ginger)
• udon noodle bowl with bok choy, ginger, and fish
• leftover lamb, arugula and roasted squash salad with pomegranate molasses dressing
• barley bowl with roasted cherry tomatoes, kale, avocado and poached egg (buy avocado)
• burritos with beans, salsa, corn, charred cherry tomatoes, avocado and cheese (buy tortillas)
• quiche with kale, feta, sun-dried tomatoes, and bacon or sausage (buy milk, feta)
• mustard crusted rack of lamb with pomegranate glaze, polenta and green salad
• chickpea and bulgar soup
• beef shank chili and cornbread
• chicken pho
• leftover lamb, lentil and chickpea salad with feta and tahini
• curried meatballs, naan, beet and carrot salad with curry dressing and pistachios (buy yogurt)
• pasta with greens, beans, and sun dried tomatoes
  

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  Do you have resolutions this year? What steps are you taking to make sure they are fulfilled?

Eat your Zucchini!

There are about a billion blog posts about ways to use up zucchini, and I’m writing another. Why? Because I think it’s time to celebrate the often misunderstood zucchini! Sure, we all get inundated with squash, because the plants are so plentiful. Yes, they get a horrible rap because when they don’t get harvested they turn into baseball bats that are NOT good, and their only use is to feed the chickens or turn into zucchini cars for festival races. But that’s not the zucchini’s fault, its the gardener’s, for not harvesting at a decent size.

I think that zucchini, along with other summer squash, is one of the most versatile of vegetables. What other vegetable can be eaten both in fruit and flower form, and eaten raw, sauteed, roasted, as soup, baked both savory and sweet, pickled, fried, AND grilled? Really, we should be writing odes to zucchini, instead of lamenting of how much we have and how sick of it we are!

Right?

But I get it. After producing steadily from May until first frost, it is easy to get overwhelmed. Here are an assortment of ways to use up this super versatile veggie. I haven’t had a chance to make all of them yet, but we are only halfway through squash season!

Raw:

• Fettuccine with Walnuts, Zucchini Ribbons, and Pecorino Romano 
• Corn and Zucchini Salad with Feta
• Chickpea, Barley and Zucchini Ribbon Salad with Mint & Feta
• Zucchini as pasta itself, such as this Linguine

Pickled:

• Sweet-and-Spicy Bread-and-Butter Pickles
• Pickled Summer Squash

Sauteed:

• Zucchini Butter (perfect on toasted bread with ricotta, topped with basil)
• Zucchini Gnocchi (ok, technically boiled…)
• Sauteed, alone or with a variety of veggies, like this one. Mix with pasta for an easy meal.

Grilled:

• Balsamic Grilled Zucchini 
• Artichoke Pesto Grilled Zucchini Bites
• Zucchini Hummus

Soup:

• Corn Chowder with Zucchini & Orzo
• Cream of Zucchini Soup

Baked, Savory:

• Zucchini Cornbread
• Oven-baked Zucchini Chips 
• Tortilla Espanola with Romesco Sauce
• Tomato Galette with Corn & Zucchini
• Stuffed Zucchini with a variety of fillings, such as this Mediterranean Style
• Herbed Summer Squash Bake

Baked, Sweet:

• Zucchini Brownies (there a billion different versions out there)
• Zucchini Bread with Oats

Fried:

• Zucchini herb fritters with garlic yogurt sauce
• Fried Zucchini blossoms
• Savory Carrot & Zucchini Pancakes

Smitten Kitchen’s Herbed Summer Squash Bake

Zucchini is a veggie that doesn’t need precision. It lends itself well to meals that are just thrown together. It pairs particularly well with: herbs (basil, parsley, marjoram &, thyme), cheese (such as feta, parmesan, & ricotta), other veggies (including corn, potatoes, eggplant, onions, tomatoes & peppers) garlic, lemon, olive oil, onions, salt, and vinegars (balsamic, red wine, sherry, white wine and champagne).

What’s your favorite way to use zucchini? 

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In Which I Need a New Relationship with My Recipe Collection

For years, I have collected recipes. I have a handful of scribbled notes transcribed on scratch paper while on the phone with my mom who would read me the very few family recipes we have. I cut out recipes from magazines. If it is a borrowed magazine, I photocopy it. If there was a dish I read about on a blog or a website, I print it out. Then, when Pinterest came along, my YUm! (yes, capitalized U, as well, because I mistyped and have yet to go fix it….) board was one of the first to be created. I also own many, many cookbooks, which, to my defence, I do cook from most of them.

the cookbook section of my bookshelf wall

Recently, I have become interested in minimalism and reading about it and de-cluttering. Although I haven’t made the plunge to apply those principles to my home, my closet or (omg. so. much. stuff) in the garage, I know that for sure, my recipe organization needs a cleanup.

I know I’m not alone in my recipe hoarding, but I like to think that compared to most, my recipes are uber organized. Yet, this highly organized system has always been my excuse, that I didn’t need to get rid of things and I didn’t need to purge. My thousands of pages weren’t just in a pile, they were organized, and therefore should be exempt from any de-cluttering projects. Behold: the binders.

the recipe binders: 3, 4″ binders A-Z

Instead of filing pages under the usual designations like “soups, meat, desserts,”, etc., I’ve gone one step (maybe leap?) beyond. My recipes are organized by ingredients, in 3, 4″ binders with alphabet tabs. And each of those tabs have tabs of ingredients.

Now before you start calling me crazy, let me explain. When I was first learning to cook with local, seasonal food, I was getting overwhelmed with having to look through the index of countless books and stacks of notes in order to find something that used up all the kale/carrots/tomatoes/squash/whatever the food of the week was. So I decided to put all my cut-out pages together in a binder, but sort them by the seasonal ingredient. For example, a cut out for a pasta dish with zucchini and carrots would be stored under “Squash, summer”, and then listed on the binder paper that I kept behind the squash tab. I would THEN go to the carrot tab, and write “Pasta with zucchini & carrot, see zucchini”. If I made something from a cookbook I owned, I would record that: “Chicken with tomatoes and kale, see blah blah book, pg. your insane”.

Over the years, I’ve collected lots and lots of recipes, and this system has worked well for me. However, now it is time for a change. For example, I have 7 recipes for tomato soup. I have 8 recipes for chai (which I DON’T EVEN DRINK ANYMORE!!!)  There are a handful of recipes that I go back to, like spicy roasted squash with lentils and goat cheese (from Smitten Kitchen), but most of these dishes were only made once, or totally forgotten about and ignored once they were filed away. I also came to dread adding new things to the binder, because of its laborious process- which is why I also stacks of torn out pages in my craft room. I simply don’t care or want to keep these binders up.

one of (several) piles of cutouts

Since these binder’s inception, I am more confident in my cooking. I now know how to adapt most recipes to what’s currently in season. My cooking style and homekeeping philosophy has also evolved, and I no longer feel pressure to put a different dish on the table every night.I rarely follow recipes step by step, but use them as inspiration. I put a higher value on a dish that will only dirty one pan over a dish that uses a new technique. I don’t need 7 different versions of tomato soup. What I want now, is easy access to that damn tomato soup recipe (which, by the way, is from Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone) that I love!

So this is my project for the next few months: go though these binders, pull out what I regularly make or can see making in the immediate future (Martha Stewart’s Beets and Yogurt with Pickled Rose Petals?….yeah, not so much), and creating a well-organized collection of recipes that I turn to regularly.

Now wish me Godspeed, I’m off to the purging! I’ll keep you updated on the project, and how I decided to organize my new life with recipes. If you have a favorite way of organizing your recipes, please leave me a comment, I’d love to hear about it!